When the movies were young (1925)

180 When the Movies were Young featured a picturesque character, one Dark Cloud, for years model to the artist Remington. Dark Cloud was sixty years old, but had the flexible, straight, slim figure of nineteen. How beautifully he interpreted the Harvest Festival dance! There were other actor-Indians on this Mount Beacon picture, present-day celebrities who were thanking their stars they were being Indians with woolly blankets to pose in. There were Henry Walthall and Lily Cahill and Jeanie Macpherson and Jim Kirkwood and Donald Crisp, among others. Donald Crisp had crept quietly into the Biograph fold as Donald Somebody Else. Occasionally, he authored poems in The Smart Set — reason for being Donald Somebody Else in the movies. Of late, Mr. Crisp has rather neglected poetry for the movies. He gave the screen his greatest acting performance as Battling Burrows in Mr. Griffith's artistic "Broken Blossoms." The night that "Way Down East" opened in New York in 1920 (September 3) Donald was radiant among the audience saying his farewells, for on the morrow he was to sail for England to take charge of the Famous Players studio there, where he put on among other things "Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush." Claire MacDowell and her husband, Charles Mailes, joined Biograph this season. Stephanie Longfellow returned to play in more pictures ; Alfred Paget began to play small parts, as did Jeanie Macpherson; also beautiful Florence LaBadie, who afterwards became a fan favorite through Thannhouser's startlingly successful serial "The Million Dollar Mystery." As one of the four principals, along with James Cruze of "The Covered Wagon" fame, Sidney Bracy and Marguerite Snow, she attracted much attention.